The Darkest of Knights
by Konner Wilson
Summary: Mickey Cohen is a big-time Mafia thug from New York, coming into Gotham City with dreams of ruling the criminal underground. But a certain bat and a certain police commissioner stand in his way...[MOB/CRIME STORY]
1. Chapter 1

**CHAPTER ONE**

The cave was dark, silent and cold. It had a look of depression, the colors were dark, there were barely any sources of light, and the light that did manage to penetrate the thick walls was faint, almost non-existent. The river at the bottom, the architect of this great room, made noise that was barely audible, even to the most trained ear. Rats scurried around the chasm, and sometimes bumped into a loose rock, and sent in free falling into the river, piercing the almost complete silence. But it was not a rock that pierced the silence on this occasion, many years ago. It was not the river, or any other thing of that sort. It was a voice.

The voice of the loyal butler, Alfred Pennyworth.

"At this rate, Master Bruce, you won't have enough blood to last you the next month!" Alfred, Bruce Wayne's happily overworked butler, exclaimed in his happy British accent.

Bruce Wayne was seated upright on the Batcave's medical table, as Alfred, who was also a fine doctor, picked out the remains of a 9mm bullet lodged in the young billionaire's right shoulder.

"Alfred, I've been at this for five years, if I don't have enough blood, I can just call the blood bank in the morning and ask for another loan," Bruce replied, always in the mood for a joke, even a bad one, "Jesus Christ!" Bruce exclaimed as Alfred pulled out the bullet.

Bruce was tall, about 6'3", and was 205 pounds of pure, lean muscle. Sweat matted his jet-black hair and dripped into his deep brown eyes, but no matter, he has been through much worse than a gunshot to the shoulder, and both he and Alfred knew it.

The cave the two long time friends were occupying was situated underneath Wayne Manor, the largest private place of residence in all of Gotham City and the surrounding suburbs. Bruce Wayne was the owner of the estate; it was passed on to him after both of his parents were killed when he was just a young boy. Bruce's grandfather was the founder of Wayne Enterprises, which had helped amass a substantial family fortune, enough to make Bruce the richest man in Gotham by a long shot.

When Bruce came-of-age, he became president of the company, and was given the final say on every business venture. But it was at this time that Bruce disappeared. He was gone for years, no one but he knew his whereabouts. The only thing that the public and his team of advisers knew was that he returned a changed man.

He no longer was wild, happy to live off of the fruits of years of hard labor his ancestors had done for him. Now, at the still young age of twenty-five, he wanted to build the fortune up even higher. This newfound focus brought himself and Wayne Enterprises wild economical success, and it was only after three years of record profits did Bruce Wayne decide to step back from the family business and focus on his own personal ventures.

One personal venture received most of his focus.

One that he had to use a large amount of money to finance, but he also had to keep it completely off the books. His partners in this venture were his accountant, Samuel Freeman, and his trusted butler, Alfred Pennyworth. Freeman's job was to keep any money going to Bruce's personal activity secret, which was one of the hardest jobs any person has ever faced. Alfred's task was to keep up with Bruce, which was _the_ hardest job any person has ever faced.

Alfred shook his head at Bruce's joke and began to sew up Bruce's wound, "May I ask how you came to acquire this injury?"

"A few punks tried to rob Jared O'Malley's liquor store, one of them had a gun and I got careless," Bruce told of his adventures as if they were boring legends, and had been told hundreds of times for hundreds of years.

You could make the argument, however, that his adventures were the stuff of legends.

A young boy, traumatized by the senseless killing of his family that happened right before his very eyes, makes a silent promise to avenge them, and that this will never happen to another person again. The way he went about fulfilling his promise is what makes his story legendary, almost mythological in a sense, but it was the truth. When night fell over the city of Gotham, Bruce Wayne donned cape and cowl, transforming from the billionaire businessman the public saw, into the protector of the good, and punisher of the evil.

He became the Batman.


	2. Chapter 2

**CHAPTER TWO**

Michael "Mickey" Cohen was the son of an Irish produce salesman and an Italian schoolteacher, and grew up in the rough streets of Brooklyn, where his family was only able to afford the bare essentials for him and his three siblings. Mickey's mother, Lucille, was fresh off the boats from Italy while she was pregnant with Mickey.

Thomas Cohen, an Irish immigrant, married the woman just a few months after Mickey's birth. Thomas adopted the child when Mickey was just one year old, changing the young Mickey's last name from Frezzori to Cohen. When Mickey was young, he stole loaves of bread from the local bakery just so his family would have food to eat. The family was so desperate, that they encouraged their son to do so, especially after both of Mickey's parents were fired from their jobs.

Soon, both Thomas and Lucille found work again, but Mickey kept up his criminal doings, this time, in secret. He found out the best way to make money was do a dangerous job no one else wanted to do. That is how he made a name for himself as "Matchstick Mickey", the local "pyrotechnic expert" or, as the New York City police called it, "arsonist". He was called on by everyone, from mob leaders to lower-class citizens, to do a job.

But after a while, the heat got to him. He decided to lay low for a while in Jersey, where he did odd jobs like selling newspapers and the like. Then, he came back to Brooklyn and used his connections to become a courier or messenger for one of the local Mafia families, the Dragnas.

By this time, Mickey was full-grown, and he stood at five feet, eight inches tall. Cohen was a former boxer, so he was built lean and powerful, although he didn't prefer to use his fists, he knew that a gun made him look bigger than his tiny frame. His black hair and beady black eyes made him a perfect fit in the Italian Mafia, although it's rare to see a professional arsonist still have their eyebrows.

In just over a year, his rank in the Dragna crime family had risen from courier to adviser of some of the boss's lieutenants, and by the time Cohen was twenty-nine, he had become the most trusted adviser of the family's boss, "Shotgun" Sonny Dragna, who liked Mickey's fire and intensity. Mickey was trusted with many of the family's most dangerous jobs, all which he completed with his trademark efficiency and style.

It was around this time that Dragna wanted to expand his organization's criminal influence. Gotham City was the location picked by the leaders of the family to start a new branch to the business. The problem was who in the family had the leadership necessary to start (and lead) this new chapter.

Who else but "Matchstick" Mickey Cohen?

After the young Italian was given a blessing from Dragna, he was flown to Gotham City with two men he had handpicked to be his advisers: Dragna's son-in-law, Louis "Lou" Felucca, and his own half-brother, Frank Cohen.

Lou was a law school graduate, and knew a lot about dealing with criminals in a very diplomatic way. He was five-foot-eleven, around 175 pounds, had jet-black hair, green eyes, and his trademark, salesman smile. He also exuded a salesman-type charisma that made him a winner in the courtroom and his life in the Mafia.

Frank Cohen, however, grew up on the mean streets of Brooklyn, and had to deal with having the famous "Matchstick" Mickey as his older brother. Frank had dark-blond hair and dark gray, soulless eyes. He had the body of a linebacker, standing 6'4", and weighing in at about two-hundred-and-twenty pounds, with the type of loyalty that made him a perfect choice to be Mickey's right hand.

After their plane touched down on the Gotham City runway, the three Brooklyn boys began their criminal organization by extorting some of the small businesses located on Gotham's Park Avenue. Nicknamed "Crime Alley", the area was, historically, a well-to-do neighborhood, populated by the upper-middle class citizens of the city, but evil took over, and turned the once respected area of Gotham into the place where lower class criminals live and die.

Extortion is the act of making someone, most of the time a business owner, pay for protection. This is an illegal and risky move, but most Mafia members start out by doing this.

Mickey and company bought an apartment smack dab in the middle of Park Avenue, right above a produce store that they bought with some of the nine thousand dollars in cash that the Dragna leadership had sent them with. The apartment was large, with three bedrooms and 1½ bathrooms, and nice kitchen and dining areas, more than enough for the small band of misfits to be comfortable in the first days of the gang's development.

But three men alone aren't enough to pull together a substantial profit. The small crew began hiring a few tough guys from area around the produce store to be enforcers. These tough guys soon attracted the business of many of Gotham City's bookies, most of which wanted some muscle behind them so their bettors would be more inclined to pay.

Just three months after touching down at Gotham International Airport, Cohen's two-man crew grew into a twenty-man force, raking in money from at least thirty bookies, and four small businesses.

Bookkeepers or "bookies" are people who take bets. Say there was a football game, the bookie would collect money from people who wanted to bet on the game. The winner(s) would receive the total amount of money that had been betted. Bookkeepers stay in business by taking as much as 30% of the money before there is even a winner.

The next step was to open a front operation, so they could explain to the government where all this money was coming from.

Cohen opened "Felucca Moving Co." under his partner Lou's name, and set about buying a few moving trucks and other supplies necessary for a moving business. It was a good choice for a cover operation, because then they could hire the enforcers they had been paying and legitimatize their paycheck. Mickey had seen the downfall of mobsters like Al Capone, who couldn't prove to the government that he legally acquired all the money he had. Mickey was determined not to make the same mistake so many of his peers had made.

Mickey wanted to expand the crew's income, he wanted to find ways to make more money, quicker and safer, and so he looked at options that would be very hands-off for him and his crew.

Mickey soon got the idea of sponsoring pickpockets. When the idea was first proposed, Lou didn't have a clue how you could "sponsor" a pickpocket. "It's simple," Mickey replied, "pretend you're a pickpocket,"

Lou paused, then sighed, saying, "Okay" and, once again, giving in to Mickey's will.

Mickey pulled out his .22 caliber pistol, pointed it at Lou, and said, "You give me half of what you steal, and I won't blow ya fucking brains out!"

Frank, who was sitting at the table where all this was occurring, laughed heartily, then said, "I like it!"

Mickey was very convincing, even when using (or threatening) any kind of violence was not an option, which is one of the reasons he got to be Shotgun Sonny's adviser in the first place. But there's an old Mafia saying that goes: "You can't talk your way out of bullets," and at that time, Mickey felt like he could.

That was his mistake.

**A/N: Yes, Mickey Cohen was real-life gangster in the 1940s-1950s, he was based in L.A and was the main target of the LAPD's famous Gangster Squad. I have not seen the movie, but I have read the book (by Paul Lieberman) multiple times and it is incredibly enjoyable, I recommend it to ANYONE.**


	3. Chapter 3

CHAPTER THREE

The sun had rose on Gotham to find Bruce Wayne seated on the third story balcony of the famous Wayne Manor. He was not alone, however, two men who represented an overseas automotive company who was interested in a partnership with Wayne Enterprises.

"What new technology are you able to bring to the table?" Bruce asked casually.

The two representatives were shocked when they met with Bruce; they had expected him to be the hands-off executive they had seen in all the press conferences they studied. So when Bruce hit them with specific questions about their company's finances and what they could provide in terms of quality, they were shocked. Bruce already knew his answer on the question of a partnership between the two companies: a solid no.

The company was too risky in their manufacturing methods, and their workers were paid pennies a day. Even the day after getting shot in the shoulder by a 9mm handgun, Bruce knew how to spot a bad deal, and this was a very bad deal.

The Joker, however, thought every deal was a bad deal…if it didn't involve him! The Joker's reputation in the underworld of Gotham had grown immensely since his arrival just three years before. He was a lone wolf when he arrived, but after a few months, he realized the importance of other people, and soon began offering his services for cash. Any kind of chaos you wanted, fireworks to light up an office building, stylish bullet holes in a rivals windshield, he could do it all.

Using the money crime bosses paid had him the Joker bought himself a crew and became a crime boss himself! After just one year since he started his crime family, he had squads of goons doing work that used to require him to do the work.

The headquarters of the Clown Prince of Crime was located in the abandoned tunnels under Roosevelt Heights, one of Gotham's slums. When Roosevelt Heights was being constructed, the city wanted to use as little over ground space as possible, because, at the time, the Soviets had the threat of nuclear destruction, and the underground tunnels were made to help protect the citizens. But when construction began, the project was already wildly over budget, so the tunnels were never fully completed.

The Joker took advantage of these sewer pipe-like tunnels, and turned them into his lair. At the center of this maze of tunnels was a large atrium, which the Joker used as his living space and the hub for his operations.

It was here that the Clown Prince first heard the name Mickey Cohen.

"Who?" the Joker asked, after hearing the name. The room was brightly lit and humid, all the lights made the Joker's green, greasy hair shine, and the humidity made the hair unmanageable, it also caused sweat to run down the clown's face, drawing visible lines in his white make-up.

The Joker had been in and out of Gotham's famous Arkham Asylum many times. The self-proclaimed Clown Prince of Crime stood about six feet tall and weighed no more than 150 pounds. His arms and legs were long and bony and his face was not a permanently etched in smile, as urban legend usually told. At this moment, he was frowning and brooding over this new enemy.

"Mickey Cohen," the goon repeated, "he's a new guy who's moved in over on Park Avenue, he's taken over a few businesses and he's got the Dragna family behind him,"

The Joker pondered this new information. He knew the power of the Dragna's, a crime family based in New York City, but he didn't care much about them, they were miles and miles away, too far away for a swift, violent reaction. After a moment of thought, he asked the thug, "What kind of operation is this guy running?"

"Extortion, a little racketeering, he's got like thirty bookies paying him some serious dough, and he's got a pretty solid cover story…"

"Well, what is it?"

"Moving company, sir, Felucca Moving Co., the main office is in the middle of Park Avenue, right across from the old bakery,"

"I want you to lead a squad over there and poke their cover story full of holes, haha…that's an order,"

"Yes, sir,"

The Joker's goon left the room with no further questions. He knew why his boss wanted the new guy's store to be shot up; a boss has to protect his business interests. If some kid comes in to the Joker's city and makes rapid progress, he gets cocky. And if the newbie didn't know the hierarchy of the underworld, he wouldn't know that the Joker was the big fish in the pond, and not one to mess with. So he wouldn't be afraid to shoot up one of the Clown Prince's businesses, hijack one of his armored vans, or even shoot one of his men, all because the kid didn't know any better. This is what made the Joker smart, because he knew that it was the young and the ignorant that could do real damage, not the old and wise. The Joker had street smarts, and he used those to hire his men.

The goon's name was Jack Lester, and was the first man hired by the Joker when he began his criminal organization. Jack was 6'4", around 250 pounds and a former football player when he lived in Cleveland, but was forced to quit and go to rehab with a drinking problem that he never fully got rid of. He escaped the rehab center and went to Gotham to start a new life. But before his hiring, Jack was in and out of Gotham's Blackgate penitentiary, where he was twice incarcerated for extortion, and once for grand theft auto.

Jack came up in the criminal ranks by putting together a gang of other Roosevelt Heights criminals, mostly former bookies and mob couriers, and made them into basically an illegal mail service. The gang would transport packages or letters from the mob, handle monetary transactions, and even escort Mafia bosses and other high ranking criminals to meetings or the like. Jack used this to intercept Mafia packages and secrets, which always put him and his crew ahead of the other gangs. But it also put Jack's name on many criminal hit lists. The Joker bought out Jack and his crew and was able to silence Jack's heaviest aggressors, but was not able to wipe Jack's name off the Gotham police database. This one small detail meant that Jack had to be extra careful with every job he did, because if he would be caught, no one would feel sorry for him.

Another one of the Joker's hires was of Bradley "Bugsy" Hammond, the owner of one of the largest and most lucrative drug rings in Gotham. Hammond was born and raised in Roosevelt Heights, so from a young age, he learned how to handle guns and the unexplainable allure of power. Hammond's brother, Warren, was the founder of the "family business", which was heroin dealing.

However, Warren was killed in a gunfight between him and rival gang members, leaving the sixteen-year-old Bugsy to work on his own. Over the years, Hammond perfected the recipe to make heroin and also how to safely transport his supply out and around Gotham City. Hammond's drugs were highly respected and very expensive, so the Joker needed to use some major capital to convince the drug lord to join him.

One way he convinced Hammond was with the Roosevelt Heights dock, Port Delano. The Joker had bought the small dock, and the three ships it housed, for relatively cheap, since it had been foreclosed upon. The dock had a large warehouse, room to bring three medium-sized ships to port, and all the equipment necessary to keep the dock running. All Hammond had to do was supply the drugs and hire a staff.

Hammond was a charismatic character, with dirty blond hair and a winning smile, he always knew when to either crack a joke or draw a pistol. He preferred to dress like a regular man of his age, to not draw suspicion to himself, and it worked like a charm.

In addition to Jack and Hammond, former Gotham City bookies were hired as accountants for the Joker's carnival of crime (for the sole purpose that he could keep all his money in order to avoid problems with the government and their dreaded I.R.S), and he used the connections the bookies had made during their time on the job to find enforcers and other muscular guys willing to do dirty work in the Clown Prince's family.

In just over a year, the sewers became the Joker's castle and the Roosevelt Heights slums became his Camelot.

Mickey Cohen knew of the Joker and his "crime family" and he did not like the idea of a clown running a criminal organization.

"When ya have a painted smile on ya face," Mickey said one night, venting, as he usually did, to his brother Frank, "It's kinda hard to be taken serious by ya rivals," he lit a cigar, "like us,"

Mickey Cohen could most definitely consider himself a rival of the Joker's after the attack on his moving company's main office on Park Avenue. Jack Lester and three other men accomplished the attack, and although Mickey didn't know their names, he knew which crew they had came from: the Joker's.

The crew was driving a Lincoln Continental, and while one man drove, three more stuck out Tommy guns and emptied their magazines on the storefront of the Felucca Moving Co., killing one of Mickey's enforcers.

Police Chief Deacon Porter addressed Gotham City that night via radio, and stated that: "This was not a gang related incident. This was a random act of senseless violence."

Porter was proven to be wildly incorrect when the man suspected of driving the Lincoln that committed the crime was found dead with six bullet holes in him. No suspects were taken into custody.

Mickey had now begun a gang war with the Joker. The Clown Prince of Crime, however, was always eagerly looking for some wannabe, gun-toting thug he could make an example of.

Now Mickey was his prime target.

"Give me the phone numbers of all of Mickey Cohen's bookies," the Joker ordered his right hand goon, Jack Lester, "and once you do, put them in my mail box out front, I'm going to need some time to myself."

"Yes, boss." Jack robotically replied, and quickly he scurried off to another end of the network of tunnels, where the Joker's accountants were busy on their computers.

After Jack was gone from the room, and the door behind him was shut, the Joker climbed up the ladder that led to his bedroom and study.

The ladder came up in the middle of a circular room, with a four-poster bed on one wall, and bookshelves on the wall opposite. A small dresser lied to the left of the bed, and on the right was a nightstand with a Colt .45 sitting on top. To the right of the ladder was a large reclining chair, which was within arm's reach of the large bookshelf.

On the left was a bathtub, and in it sat a woman who had a very admirable physique, and was very good-looking. Beside the tub laid a red and black jumpsuit, which had obviously worn by the woman in the tub.

The Joker smiled warmly at the woman and said, "Hello, Harley,"


End file.
